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Beat the Streak Report: Thursday, July 1

Let me preface everything I’m about to write with the fact that my
longest streak this season is a mere seven-gamer. I pick with my heart
more than my head 80 percent of the time. If Miguel Cabrera played
everyday, I’d never change my pick. I threw away a four-game streak
just to pick Pedro Alvarez on the day he got called up.

So, sure, criticism from me towards a guy who just completed a 41-game
streak would be like Danny DeVito chastising Yao Ming for not being
tall enough.

With that said, I just don’t get Kyle “kbarr9” Barr’s selection
of Denard Span yesterday which ultimately wrecked his chances at the
$3,000,000 grand prize.

Let’s get right to the steak and deal with the side dishes later:

Span was facing Tigers rookie southpaw Andy Oliver, a very
talented and highly touted 2009 second-round pick of the Tigers whose
average fastball hovers around 94 mph. Did I mention he’s left handed?
I did? OK, good.

Like everyone else in the Majors who does not play for the
Atlanta Braves, Span had never faced Oliver before. This is not a good
thing, especially when Span is batting only a respectable .284 vs.
southpaws this season.

At best, at the VERY best, choosing Span vs. a
hard-throwing lefty who he’s never seen before seems like a
below-average choice. And that’s being kind, actually, ya know,
considering we are allowed to select any Major League hitter in this
game — not just someone from the Minnesota Twins (and if this were a
Twins-only BTS game, Span at best would be the second-best choice
behind Justin Morneau and his .343 AVG against lefties).

Like this:

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50 Comments

What’s up everybody. It’s been a while but just wanted to say thank god June is over. My worst month ever. Thank god July is here. New month and time to start a nice long streak. I have Hamilton in BTS, Rolen in HR BTS, Yanks in Survivor. Good luck to all.

David Ardsma of Seattle really should consider a job working for Starbucks. Maybe he will be good @ handling hot coffee. This guy blows every game he comes in. I am a Yankee fan but I root for underdogs like Seattle. So Seattle barely muster 2 runs and this moron comes in and blows it. He is 0-4 going on 0-5 now.

How will this guy show his face when he heads back to the dugout? He basically zapped little joy Seattle had this week.

No self-respecting Yankee fan ever roots for the other team. EVER. Who cares about Seattle’s joy. Hurl some beer, give ’em a Bronx cheer and a few finger gestures next time. 🙂 What’s next, cheering on the crazy idiots??????????? Heaven forbid!!!

@nardberg: I have a love & hate relationship with the Yanks. I really despise and hate the way they buy championship. The way they overpay for everyone. I sometimes take joy in their failure. Especailly, when it involves a righteous cheater like A-Roid. I am presuming you’re a Yankee fan too. And I really do not like AJ. He was overrated with Toronto but Yanks threw tons of dinero his way. This guy blows like ever 2 out 5 games to the point of no return. It was the same last year. I actually don’t even like most of the players on the team except for Swisher, Cano and CC.

I forgot another failed project. Curtis Granderson. That was seen coming miles away. Not that I cared about Damon that much but Granderson is highly overrated. Even when he is hot, he simply cannot hit lefties. And they gave away Austin Jackson who gets min. salary. In the meantime, the Yankees expect us to continue shell out outrageous amount of money for everything. It was such a joy seeing empty seats at the stadium last year.

When Vaz wasn’t pitching well the first month, their was talk of Yankees going out to get another starter. I am sure if that was just press talking or the management’s thinking but doesn’t this sound preposterous?

So you take almost Cy Young winner from last year and a #1 starter for the Braves. He strikes out tons. You make him the #4/5 starter. Then you give him one month and you’re already getting antsy? I actually hoped they traded Vaz to Houston for Oswalt and see Vaz pitch as well as they did last year. This kind of thing bothers me about the Yankees. They make the games lot less interesting for small market teams like Pirates.

I don’t know about David Wright for today. Something about Livan this year that puts kinks in the stats. I went against him like 3 times with hitters who hit him well & all 3 times they came out 0-fers. I vowed never to diss his Mickey Mouse curveball that goes even slower than Wakefield’s knuckler.

I know…. it was a tough decision to take him 4th time in a row. I focused more on Livan coming down to earth during his last few starts. I was down to 3 choices Wright, Jeter and Pujols. Oh well a couple more at bats to go………. COMMON WRIGHT LOL…..

Blanco, u should of chose somebody else as u can’t go to the well too often. U had Wright for 3 days and got hits each day. I would of went a different route. He looks good on paper but did u check Livan’s home stays. He pitches way better at home compared to the road. His ERA is 1.81 at home this year and he gives up far fewer hits but we will see what happens.

I agree with vinny1979. You went to well little too long with Wright. Wright is not that type of hitter. He normally has many 0fer days between 2 to 3 days of hitting. I think you can do that with is Ichiro and M. Cab. But even those guys can burn you though because they go on minor slumps of 2 to 3 days in a row of 0-fers. Good run though! I think you have longest streak this year for the messagers here.

Today is shaping out to be an uneventful day if you didn’t pick Cano. Not many screaming picks today. And I still don’t think Cano was a great pick. It was contest between who is worst. Cano’s inability to hit lefties this month v. Rowland-Smith’s inability to get leffties out. Cano won!

One thing I am 100% clear on is that you can’t get to 57 picking only the premier players. Sometimes you got to step really outside the plate. I mean guys who are scrubs but who happen to shine that day. I will put it to this way. The blooger’s “you will thank me later picks” have a pretty good track record of getting hits. I stopped counting it while back but if you take out guys who are not gonna play, I wouldn’t be surprised to see if they have a better track record than the MLB pick of the day.

What I meant was there wasn’t anyone that stood out to pick. All of the picks were somewhat iffy @ best including Cano. I am worried about wolfenstein a bit. He made 2 trips to front page last year. This guy is a good picker. I think he will be our next Dick/kbarr.

btsPlayer wrote: “This guy is a good picker. I think he will be our next Dick/kbarr.”
FYI: Looking back at Top2500 data, Wolfy entered it on 9 June with streak of 8. Dick was tied for 4th & Barr was tied for 24th on that day

Well it finally happened……
Joey “The Black Cat” Votto – Called out on strikes in the first inning on a low pitch, argues with Plate Umpire Angel Campos, throws his helmet and gets tossed from the game.
Officialy 0-1 and how many streaks end?

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